


Now and Zen

by Donda



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Platonic Soulmates, Zen gardens, life in the wasteland
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-05
Updated: 2017-05-05
Packaged: 2018-10-28 09:43:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10828710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Donda/pseuds/Donda
Summary: Out on a search for Max, Furiosa finds herself following an odd trail of rock gardens. She doesn’t know if this is what she’s looking for or is merely a distraction from her objective, but she can’t help but be curious about who built them and why.(Winner of the 2018 Mad Max Fanfic Awards in the Best Gen Short Fic of 2016-2017 category.)





	Now and Zen

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much to everyone who voted for this fic in the Mad Max Fanfic awards!
> 
>   
>    
> 

Max came back to the Citadel just once, but he was twitchy and nervous. The women welcomed him back with open arms, like family, but that just seemed to make him more hesitant. He stayed for nearly a moon cycle, and then left without so much as a goodbye.  
  
Furiosa’s not particularly surprised. It felt to her like he was trying to fit himself into a mold, like he was forcing himself to stay. It’s not that he doesn’t like the people - Furiosa could tell he did enjoy seeing the women again in his own reserved way, and she’s pretty confident he’s comfortable around her, with as often as he sought her out while he was there, but maybe it was the Citadel itself that made him nervous, or maybe he’s just not suited to a settled lifestyle.  
  
She hopes he’ll come back now and then. They all hope. It had been nice to actually have the time to get to know him. He had been the reason they turned around, the reason they were here rather than 160 days out into nothingness. He meant something to each of them - Furiosa most of all - that day he had leapt off the lift and disappeared into the crowd, and over the month he was back at the Citadel, each of their relationships with him had gradually grown from trust and respect and gratitude into something more, something closer.  
  
But the days pass - fifty, one hundred, two hundred - and he doesn’t appear again. She wonders if he’s still out there, or if he went and finally got himself killed; maybe ran into the wrong people, met his end on the wrong side of a gun; maybe sickness struck when he was alone; maybe a trap; maybe he got stranded and starved. Is there any point to waiting and hoping when there’s a chance he’s not even alive anymore? It hurts her to think that if he’s died, after all they went through together, none of them would even know.  
  
Furiosa herself gets restless, almost bored with the new, safe life they’ve built here. It’s nice, she’s grateful for it and proud of it, but she’s been too long a fighter now to feel like this is her place anymore, and she starts to think she understands Max a little better. She understands why he left again.  
  
Finally she decides to go looking for him. They don’t need her here. They’re strong, stable, defended. And Furiosa wants to try a new life for a little while, a life of exploration and discovery, and, she admits, a little risk and hardship are more of a draw than a downside for her.  
  
“You’ll bring him back, right?” Cheedo asks with hope in her eyes.  
  
Furiosa gives a quiet laugh. “If he’ll let me.”  
  
She doesn’t even know where to begin. Just that she’s brought as much food, water, and guzzoline as her car could fit, and she’s prepared to drive until she finds some sign or word of him. Even if she can’t track down the man, proof that he’s still alive will make her feel a hell of a lot better, at least.  
  
She drives in the direction she remembers he left. It’s probably irrelevant now. In over two hundred days he could be anywhere, but it’s a better lead than nothing.  
  
She drives for days, stopping in towns when she finds them, where she keeps a keen eye and ear for anything familiar. She doubts he’d ever keep a high enough profile for people to remember him or recognize him by description, but she asks around when she can anyway. She gets blank stares and shaken heads. She asks about the vehicle she saw him with when he had turned back up at the Citadel, too. She has no way of knowing if he’s still using the same one, but it’s all she’s got. Nobody quite remembers the car, either.  
  
She skirts around barriers, cruises aimlessly through the wasteland, and runs into more than a few unfriendly tribes, but carries on, enjoying the adventure of the lifestyle if nothing else. She’s definitely missed the adrenaline of a fight, the zone she gets in when it all comes down to survival, kill or be killed, best road warrior wins.  
  
She’s about thirty days out when she stops in a hidden ravine to camp, and finds something strange. She’d go as far as to call it a little wasteland garden, smooth rocks laid out in a rectangular bed delineated by lines of rougher stones, with even grooves gouged into the earth in concentric circles around the rocks in the middle. They range from large to small, light to grey to a single black one, but all are neatly rounded like she knows only could come from old river beds, when water still flowed across the land. She stands, staring at it. She’s seen this before. Where? When?  
  
The Citadel. Dag. _Max_.  
  
  
  
“Why?” she remembers Max grunting quietly as she walked by him and Dag at the top of the Citadel, staring at a little patch of sand with decorative stones and raked lines.  
  
“It’s calming,” Dag had said. “Helps you stay present in the moment, you know?”  
  
Max grunted, unconvinced.  
  
“You dwell too much on the past and future. That’s your problem.”  
  
  
  
Furiosa stares longer at the lone little patch of order and art in the middle of the desert. Could it have been him? Who else would be out here doing such a strange thing? She’s not sure, and the questions hound her all night, but in the morning she reluctantly makes herself leave. Either way, he’s not here, and this isn’t proof that he’s anywhere. She’ll have to keep searching.  
  
Ten days later, no closer to finding Max, she comes across another one out in the middle of absolutely nothing. She stops and stares out her window at it. She’s not even sure where the rocks for this one came from. Not around here, that’s for sure.  
  
A few days later, there’s another nestled against the wall of a town that she only finds because she was hiding her vehicle out around the back. She stares at it a moment, still unconvinced that Max would be the one doing this, but intrigued nonetheless. She asks in the town if anybody’s seen someone of Max’s description, but also asks if anyone knows who made the little rock garden outside the wall. Nobody seems to know, on either account.  
  
Through her travels, she comes across another, then another and another. Sometimes only a few days apart, sometimes she goes tens of days before she finds one. Sometimes they’re old and covered in blown-in dust and dirt, sometimes they look freshly built, the lines in the sand stark and neat still. Maybe this is just some art form people out here do that she’s never seen before. To be fair, she has barely left the territory of the Citadel since she was taken from her home. It’s not like she would know.  
  
When she spots another one right next to a tiny little village she’s happened across, she’s hardly surprised anymore. She gives it a brief glance, but continues in to the town to trade salvage for supplies and perhaps a little information.  
  
“Do you know what that is?” she asks the woman she’s trading with, motioning over her shoulder toward the rock garden.  
  
The woman squints past her, trying to figure out what she’s talking about for a moment before she lights up with realization. “Hah, oh, that old thing?” The woman laughs. “Some wild man comes by and builds them. The kids’ll kick ‘em apart eventually, but after a while he’ll come back and remake it. It’s always the same, every time…” She seems lost in thought for a moment. “Even if he has to bring in new rocks. Anyway, he comes in and trades sometimes. Did a bit of work for some food once. Doesn’t talk much, though.”  
  
Furiosa looks over her shoulder at the little rock garden in the distance. Wild man. What better way to describe him? She finishes conducting her business quickly, and heads back out to the rock garden.  
  
Why would it be the same? Every one she’s found has been different, so why would he make this one exactly the same every time? Better yet, why is he coming back to rebuild something that seems so inconsequential out here? She stares down at it, then glances up around her suddenly before crouching down and scrutinizing it harder.  
  
Maps, she realizes. They’re maps. A little abstract, but each one mimics the area it’s in. A continuous line of rocks on one near a range of mountains, neat little stacks of balanced rocks on others when there’s a city or a lone geographical feature nearby. She doesn’t see any pattern in the smooth raked lines - they seem to just flow around the rocks naturally. But, she realizes suddenly, always there is a single, small, black rock. In every single one she’s seen, it’s always there.  
  
She digs through the back of her car and finds a half-rotten piece of canvas, then goes to collect the smallest bit of oil from her engine and mixes it with some fine dust to thicken it. She goes back to the rocks and uses a scrap of sturdy wire to sketch the design in oil on a corner of the canvas. If it’s a map, it’s meant to be followed, and she’ll do just that.  
  
She orients herself against the town the two small white rocks stacked on top of each other must represent, and the nearby escarpment of rocks the larger grey one must be indicating, and points herself toward that single black rock.  
  
When she reaches her destination a day and a half later, she zigzags back and forth, back and forth, searching for something, anything - a town, a camp, even a single vehicle out here. What she finally comes across is another rock garden, and she sighs at it, but can’t help the little smile that crosses her face. She draws this one too, marking carefully the location of the black rock, then sets out to follow it.  
  
One leads to another, and that to another. Some take some searching to find, some span greater than the length of her car and are easily spotted. They seem to be taking her on a grand tour of the wasteland, and she would be annoyed at the winding path, except she can’t help but be curious. Is it Max leading her along, or some other wild man wandering the wastes on his own?  
  
One sends her back to a rock garden she had already found before she discovered they were maps. That one sends her to one by an impressive barter-town, and she would stop to ask around and search for Max, but again there’s that black rock, this time on the far edge of the rock garden, tempting her away to wherever it will lead. Her scrap of canvas slowly fills up with sketches of the rock gardens, rectangles and circles and lines that would be meaningless to anybody but her and whoever is leaving these maps.  
  
The next leads her to a small oasis, and that one leads her to a rocky butte. She had to duck and cover from a violent sand storm the previous day, and even here the ground is covered in drifts of freshly wind-swept sand, but she can’t help but notice that the rock garden is more recent than the storm. The rounded rocks are still stacked neatly. There is no sand covering them. The raked lines are undisturbed. She sketches it on her canvas, orients herself with the landmarks, and stares ahead at where it points her. She has to be close.  
  
She rides for another day, scanning the horizon as she goes. She’s pretty sure she’s getting close to the location the most recent map had indicated, when she sees a dark speck in the distance and stops to check with her binoculars. It’s a vehicle, parked out in the middle of an empty landscape of rocks and small hills. A lone figure is sitting on its hood. She doesn’t recognize the vehicle, and can’t make out much more than that.  
  
She doesn’t start her car again for a few minutes. It could be the builder of these gardens - could even be Max, or it could be someone she’d be better off not approaching. On the other hand, it could just as easily be another traveler like her, taking a break from the difficulties of the road or even broken down and stranded.  
  
Finally she decides to find out and slowly weaves her way through the terrain. She’s careful to keep an eye on the vehicle, though, unsure how this wastelander will react. She makes her approach slow but deliberate - she sees the person, she won’t be easy to ambush, but at the same time isn’t making any aggressive moves. Not a target, and not a threat, she tries to communicate with nothing but the motion of her car.  
  
The person and vehicle disappear from view behind a small hill for a minute, and when she comes around and they come back into view, the figure is still seated on the hood of the car, but is facing her, alert and wary. She slows her car a little more, but as she gets closer, a smile spreads across her face.  
  
Max.  
  
He looks a little different, a little scruffier, but she recognizes the shape of him, the posture, the large pauldron on the right shoulder of his ratty old jacket. Against the fender of his vehicle leans a bent metal rake, and only a few feet off his front bumper is another rock garden.  
  
She notices his hand on the gun strapped to his leg, and she rolls to a gradual stop before she reaches him and slowly gets out of her car. He squints against the sun as she stands up and closes her door. All at once his body relaxes and his hand leaves the gun. A little smirk crosses his face, and his chest moves with an unheard laugh.  
  
Furiosa can’t help but smirk back as she crosses the distance to him.  
  
“Didn’t think that would actually work,” he says in a rough voice. “You followed the maps?”  
  
Furiosa gives a nod. “Wasn’t sure it was you, but I had a feeling.” The smile slips from her face as she stops beside his car. “I thought you might be dead, you know. When you didn’t come back.”  
  
Max hums thoughtfully. “Not yet.” When Furiosa doesn’t reply he adds, quietly: “Sorry.”  
  
They both find themselves looking down at the little garden in front of the car as a companionable silence settles between them. It’s not quite finished. Only the landscape rocks are placed, the raked lines between them not quite done. The little black rock lays outside of the boundary, its location undecided.  
  
Furiosa peels her eyes away from the garden and looks up at him where he’s still seated cross-legged on the hood of his car. “How did you know I would come looking for you?”  
  
“Didn’t, really,” he responds. “Just thought… As long as I’m building them, they might as well have some meaning.” _Just in case_ goes unsaid.  
  
Furiosa doesn’t comment that she knows he went back to old ones to rebuild them. This was more than just trying to give them purpose. She suspects he held some hope that someone he knew would come looking for him out here. She stifles the smirk that tries to creep back across her face. Well, he got what he wanted in the end. “Why didn’t you ever come back?”  
  
Max grunts. “Meant to, but… Not my place.”  
  
“Cheedo asked me to bring you back.”  
  
He looks over at her suddenly, surprise on his face. “You came out here for that?”  
  
“No,” Furiosa huffs a laugh. “I came out here to make sure you hadn’t gotten yourself killed.”  
  
Max grunts in response.  
  
“You could have at least dropped by. Left some sign or message or something.”  
  
Another grunt, and a brief silence. “Didn’t mean to worry you.”  
  
“Fool,” Furiosa murmurs, then clears her throat. “Well, you’ve got me out here now. Now what?” She doesn’t admit to him that she may have lost track of how to get back to the Citadel from here. She doesn’t say either that it may have been intentional.  
  
Max blinks at her, as if it hadn’t occurred to him that he should have a plan for this situation. He doesn’t have an answer for her.  
  
“Would you be willing to go back?” Furiosa tries. She wouldn’t mind staying out here a little longer herself, but figures that even if Max does know the way to the Citadel, it’ll take them quite a while to get there. “The others would be relieved to see you again.”  
  
Max thinks for a time. “If I do,” he says haltingly, “for a little while… What then?”  
  
“That’s up to you,” she says.  
  
“Up to you,” he corrects. “If…” He clears his throat a little nervously. “Y’ wanna join me.”  
  
Furiosa’s face softens at the invitation. She smiles. “Yeah. I’d like that.”  
  
Max returns a shy smile. They fall into silence again, and after a minute Max slides off the hood of his car, picks up the rake, and slowly starts drawing smooth circles around the rocks in his garden, filling in what was blank and leaving the black stone unplaced. Furiosa thinks back to Dag showing this to him in her attempt to calm his mind of the disquiet they had each realized he carried everywhere. He does seem a little calmer than the last time she saw him, a little more at ease, at least for the moment. She waits until he’s finished the sweeping lines and has leaned back against his car again before she speaks.  
  
“Do you know how to get back?”  
  
Max hums and and bends down to pick up the little black rock from the edge of his rock garden. He circles it over the map, looking thoughtful, as if debating where to place it, where on the map to mark their destination, then suddenly turns his back to the garden and throws the rock hard over and beyond his car. It lands with a small crack and rolls to a stop a respectable distance from where they’re standing. Max grunts. “Something like that.”  
  
Furiosa smiles. So a long trip it is. She doesn’t mind in the least.

**Author's Note:**

> This may or may not have been inspired by [this photo right here](http://sacrificethemtothesquid.tumblr.com/post/159985916463/officemax-works-on-his-zen).
> 
> Credit goes to [hillcreature](http://archiveofourown.org/users/hillcreature) for the idea about the rock gardens being maps.


End file.
